I’ve of my favorite mechanics comes from Unearth, specifically their catch-up/bad luck mitigating mechanic.

In a game where the goal is to have the winning die on a ruin as a cumulative threshold is reached, any dice rolled under 3 nets you a stone, which can be used to build you own ruins.

Roll poorly enough and you won’t fall too far behind. Have the worst rolls every time and there’s a good chance you can win without actually capturing a single ruin card.

You forget that their plans for an “overhaul” of any given program amounts to nothing more than cutting funding and hoping they can pull the wool over their constituents eyes with some new atrocity long enough to make everyone forget about how worse off their lives are now.